


a prehistoric ritual (where everyone promises fidelity forever)

by amycarey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 12:29:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7171259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma proposes. It goes about as well as you might imagine. <br/>An expansion on a swanqueenfanon tumblr prompt answer of mine: Do they get married? Is there a proposal? How would that go (or not go)?</p>
            </blockquote>





	a prehistoric ritual (where everyone promises fidelity forever)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘Getting Married Today’ from Company.

It happens directly after the first time they sleep together. 

 

No. That’s unfair, really. 

 

They’ve slept together plenty of times over the years: huddled together and sharing body heat in survival situations, those nights after Hook left her (“you’re not the Emma Swan I fell for,” he’d told her and she’d wondered who that girl had even been) when she didn’t sleep, caught up in a grief that seemed untenable, until Regina had stopped by and curled up beside her, stroking her hair and whispering nonsense stories to her, dozing on the couch together after Netflix marathons…

 

It happens directly after the first time they have sex.

 

Emma falls back against the plush pillows of Regina’s bed. It’s taken at least three orgasms apiece for them to actually reach the bed. She could count them off, take any willing--or unwilling--participant on the Tiki Tour of the Sheriff and the Mayor’s Recent Sexual Awakening. There was a hand in Regina’s pants, fingers curling, twisting, in the bathroom of Bella Notte when the tension at their first official date became too much. There was the frantic encounter against the front door of the house, Regina’s knee rubbing at the apex of Emma’s thighs, which led directly into what had started as a calming apple cider and had ended with Regina coming twice against Emma’s tongue on the couch in her study after spilling cider down her blouse. Emma would spend some time on this imaginary tour fondly reminiscing over the moment at the top of the stairs when Regina, distracted by attempting to remove her blouse, tripped on a step and fell forward onto Emma. And finally, the carpet burn on Regina’s back speaks volumes to the encounter on the carpet of her bedroom, clothes tangled around them, fierce thrusts, back arching. 

 

Emma’s body is an elastic band pulled taut and snapped.

 

“Tired already, Emma?” Regina asks, elongating the syllables, as she crawls up from her position between Emma’s thighs. Her fingers dance against Emma’s skin as she moves, and her whole body sings with released tension. So, her verbal filter utterly exhausted, the words just come out. 

 

“God,” she sighs, covering her face with her hand. “Marry me.” 

 

Regina just laughs.

 

While Emma’s filter might be broken, her brain isn’t and she’s suddenly certain that she’s never been surer about anything. “No,” she says. She’s earnest now in a way she can’t remember being since standing on Regina’s front step on her second day in Storybrooke and telling her about blowing out the candle on her cupcake, making that wish (“that I didn’t have to be alone on my birthday,” she’d said and she’ll never forget the shift, Regina’s eyes hardening), and the knock at the door that changed the course of her life. “We should totally get married.”

 

Regina laughs again. “Of course, dear.” Her tone is dismissive and she is smiling in that condescending way that somehow infuriates Emma and turns her on in equal measure and something in Emma just  _ breaks _ . Five years. Five years of dancing around their feelings, of heartbreak and wrong choices, of Graham and Neal and Hook and Hood, of their son and sacrifice and promises of happy endings.

 

How does Regina not see how  _ right _ this is?

 

“Cool,” she says. “Whatever.” And she rolls out of bed, untangling her shirt from the mess on the floor. “See you later.”

 

“Emma?” Regina asks, sitting up. The sheet falls and Emma’s gaze is definitely not drawn to her breasts, and she’s definitely not thinking about how recently her mouth has been on them, because she’s not enough. She never has been and she never will be. 

 

“Early start tomorrow,” she says and then she runs, only barely remembering to pull on her jeans, which are hanging from the hat stand in the hall, before bolting out the front door.  

 

She assiduously avoids Regina for three days until Regina corners her in the bathrooms at Granny’s, leaning against the hand dryer and crossing her arms. “You’re avoiding me.” 

 

Emma scrubs at soapy hands with unreasonable force. “No I’m not,” she says, but her heart thuds unnaturally loudly, the beat building up in a rhythm in her ears. 

 

Regina laughs, though the sound is anything but amused, and her nose wrinkles in this way that just makes Emma want to  _ melt _ . “Call me when you’ve stopped freaking out about us sleeping together,” she says and turns heel to leave.

 

Emma reaches out, touches her shoulder. She doesn’t restrain her (because she remembers too well what that was like, Killian’s hand grabbing her arm, pulling her back, halting her movements--and those moments of restriction, of possession, stay with her even as the good memories have all but faded) but Regina stills anyway and turns to face her. “It wasn’t that,” Emma says. The cowardly, rodent part of her brain hisses,  _ run away run away, _ but she tunes it out. “It was afterwards.”

 

Regina stares blankly for a moment before her eyes widen, remembering. “Emma--” she starts.

 

“Whatever,” Emma says, curt. “It’s no big deal. I’ve got to get to work.” And she brushes past Regina, tries not to notice the something-subtle scent of her, the way her hair--long now--brushes against Emma’s bare arm. 

 

(She remembers the curtain of hair brushing against her shoulders when Regina straddled her, lips a breath away from Emma’s. She remembers nights in front of the television at Mifflin Street, that hair tickling her skin.

 

She remembers pushing it back behind Regina’s ears when she kissed her for the first time.)

 

It’s a quiet night at work, as it so often is when there’s not some great and terrible evil in Storybrooke to battle, and so she struggles to stay awake and keep her mind occupied with thoughts that are Not Regina. 

 

Not Regina’s dark eyes, smiling at her over dinner.

 

Not Regina’s stifled sobs as Emma slept beside her after Robin’s death.

 

Not the subtle relaxing of Regina’s shoulders when Emma told Snow and David that Killian had left her.

Not Regina.

 

She is relieved by Mulan a little after seven, grateful it’s her newest deputy and not David because Mulan doesn’t ask questions about Emma’s red eyes or frown, just stares disapprovingly at the ring of wadded paper around the trash can. “Really, Sheriff?” 

 

Emma scowls. “Nothing going on in Storybrooke.”

 

“Your aim is terrible,” Mulan replies, “and I thought the Sheriff’s department was trying to be more environmentally friendly?” Emma sticks out her tongue.

 

The idea of going home--or rather to the house where she keeps all her things--is too difficult. She wants comfort. She wants to go to Regina’s, to lie on her couch and be fed grilled cheese and to have Henry make her smile. But she can’t, not when Regina’s the reason she needs comforting.

 

She tries the next best thing, though she’s already regretting it as she knocks at the door of the loft. “Emma!” Snow says, beaming. “I thought you were--what are you doing knocking?”

 

“Hey,” she says, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans, hunching up. 

 

“What’s wrong sweetheart?” Snow asks, and she almost cracks, but then Neal clatters down the stairs.

 

“Emma!” he yells, because everything her baby brother says is in an ‘outside voice’, and barrels at her legs, almost knocking her over.

 

“Hey, kiddo,” she says, lifting him up and hugging him. Her resentment of him has long since faded, except in the depths of night, unable to sleep and running through the litany of things she has failed at. 

 

_ Being a girlfriend, being a daughter, high school biology, being the saviour... _

 

“Neal, have you got your lunch?” Snow asks, and when Neal shakes his head, forehead banging against Emma’s shoulder, she sighs and moves to the kitchen. There’s a knock at the door. “That’ll be Zelena,” she calls out. “Can you?”

 

Emma opens the door to Zelena. “Sheriff,” she says curtly. Zelena’s never liked her, even now that Zelena is ostensibly good (or at least, not wicked), and Emma’s not really sure why. After all, surely Emma has more cause to dislike her after everything she’s put people through. 

 

“Zelena,” she says, equally cold. “Your turn for carpool I presume.”

 

Neal takes this opportunity to launch himself out of Emma’s arms and down to Robyn, who is all giant blue eyes and ginger hair and who clings to Zelena’s cardigan. “Cute,” Emma says, when Robyn removes her thumb from her mouth and grabs Neal’s hand.

 

“I’ll not have you putting my daughter into your heteronormative categories,” Zelena says in a lofty tone and Emma, as she so often is, is left with a desire to punch Zelena in the face.

 

“Oh, for f--” but Snow mercifully appears, lunch bag in tow.

 

“Zelena, how are you? Hi, Robyn!” 

 

Zelena smiles and it burns that Regina’s sister prefers Snow to her. “We’re doing just grand, aren’t we, Pistachio?” She runs a hand through Robyn’s curls. “We should get to daycare though.” 

 

Emma watches Zelena warily as Snow farewells Neal, peppering his face with kisses. Her orange hair is coiled at the base of her neck and she’s staring at Emma, eyes narrowed. Emma runs a hand through her own hair, and fights an alarming desire to cry. Zelena doesn’t look much like Regina, not really, but everything about her reminds her of her. “Regina was married once before,” Zelena says, and then she takes the kids’ hands and leaves.

 

“What an odd thing to say,” Snow says, frowning. She turns to her. “Emma, honey, you don’t look well.”

 

“Tired,” Emma says. “Didn’t want to go to the house.”

 

Snow wraps her arms around Emma. “I just changed the sheets in your room,” she says. It’s not her room anymore, not really, but Snow’s sewing room-cum-guest room. However, Emma appreciates the lie. “David’s at the shelter, and I’ve got to go to work. Unless--”

 

“Go,” Emma says and she manages a wan smile. “I just need to sleep.”

 

Snow hugs her again, pats her hair. “It’ll turn out,” she says, and, not for the first time, Emma wonders what Snow knows. 

 

(“It’s so nice Henry’s mothers get along so well,” Snow had said last Thanksgiving when the two of them were in the kitchen alone, washing up. 

 

“What are you implying?” Emma had asked, her words carrying less force thanks to the chunk of pecan pie she’d swiped instead of rinsing dishes.

 

“Nothing,” Snow had replied. “It’s just--nothing.” She had smiled at Emma’s scowl. “I’m glad you’re happy.”)

 

Zelena’s comment plays in her mind as she lies under the familiar quilt and when she sleeps it’s restless, tossing and turning, dreaming of a young Regina, dressed in pastels, desperately unhappy in grand rooms. Everything about Leopold is shrouded in half-thoughts and unspoken whispers. Regina never speaks of him if she can help it and Snow, well. Snow loved her father.

 

She wakes with a start.

 

And she’s not alone. Someone’s sitting at the end of her bed, silhouetted in the dim light. Regina. Legs crossed. Arms folded.

 

“I thought you were joking,” she says.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma lies, pulling the covers up in a protective gesture.

 

“Robin proposed once,” Regina says, and she stands, stepping forward, encroaching on Emma’s space. The air is still and thick between them. “In the underworld. Before…”

 

“You never said,” Emma says, and she can’t help the defensive whine in her words.

 

“I didn’t accept,” Regina replies. “I’ve been married before, Emma. It wasn’t pleasant. I don’t like the idea, as a rule.” 

 

Emma frowns. “It was stupid,” she admits, and reaches out, feels the press of the pads of her fingers against Regina’s skin where the fabric of her shirt meets collarbone. “We only just got it together. I just--” She stops and, even in the shadow, she can see that Regina understands.

 

(Because what are they after all if not two women with histories of lost loves and rejection and holding-on-too-tight and running-away-from-matters-of-the-heart?)

 

Instead of verbalising this though, Regina lets out a shallow breath. “Five years of foreplay though,” she says and there’s a grin threatening to break through her features. “I can understand how you became overwhelmed by, well, all of this.” She gestures at her body.

 

“You’re an asshole,” Emma says but she laces her fingers through Regina’s, lifts the hand to her lips and presses. Regina’s hand trembles. “I promise I won’t propose again.”

 

She doesn’t.

 

Regina doesn’t.

 

Three years into their relationship, Henry, home from college for the summer, sits watching them at the kitchen table. Regina passes Emma a mug of coffee, pressing a kiss to her forehead as she does so, and Emma feels her smile broaden, like a sunflower meeting direct sunlight. Henry’s eyes dart from Emma, to Regina, and back again. “Are you alright, darling?” Regina asks.

 

“Can you just get married already?” he snaps. “You’ve been together forever and I’m all grown up and it’s been legal for years now and I want to go to a wedding that isn’t Grandma and Grandpa’s weird vow renewal!” He lets out a deep breath, sighing back against his chair.

 

Emma laughs. “How long have you been holding that rant in?” she asks. 

 

He shrugs. “A while. Just--”

 

Regina’s worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, and Emma takes her hand. “Kid,” she says, before Regina can speak and possibly do something terrible like propose to make Henry happy. “We’re happy. That’s enough. That’s everything.” Regina squeezes her hand tighter in silent ‘thank you’.

 

“Don’t call me ‘kid’,” Henry grumbles. “I’m nearly twenty.”

 

“You’ll always be--” Emma starts, but he’s already stomped out of the room. “Teenagers,” she says, looking over at Regina and shaking her head.

 

Regina’s eyes are bright and she looks at Emma like she’s something precious. “We could--” she offers and Emma shakes her head.

 

“I’m super chill with what we are,” she says.

 

“Young people don’t say ‘chill’ anymore,” Regina informs her, and so Emma pulls her down to sit on her lap and kisses her until Regina’s own chill is utterly destroyed.

 

They never get married.

  
Somehow it all turns out okay anyway.


End file.
